New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has proposed a second bullet train after the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor that will run from New Delhi to Varanasi in just two hours and 40 minutes.
According to a report in Times of India, the project connecting Delhi to Varanasi via Aligarh, Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow and Sultanpur,has been fast-tracked in the wake of UP assembly polls next year. This will be a part of the ambitious 1513 long Delhi-Kolkata corridor.
.The travel time between Delhi and Lucknow (506 km) is likely to be 1 hour 45 minutes while travel between Delhi to Kolkata (1,513 km) will take 4 hours 56 minutes, the report adds.
A Spanish firm is studying the feasibility of the proposed corridor and it has already submitted the interim report but the final report will most likely come in by the end of the year.
The preliminary cost, without rolling stock, being worked out is estimated to be about Rs 43,000 crore for the Delhi-Varanasi stretch and around Rs 84,000 crore for the entire Delhi-Kolkata corridor. However, the final cost is yet to be worked out.
Rail Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will start its operation in 2023.
The Detailed Project Report (DPR) submitted by Japan to the Rail Ministry has proposed 25 per cent of construction on elevated corridor, 64 per cent of the work on surface (mostly embankments) and 6 per cent as tunnels.
This includes the 21-km undersea tunnel between Thane creek and Virar in Mumbai. However, the rail ministry has proposed to the Japanese government to explore the feasibility of converting the entire route running through 12 stations into an elevated corridor.
